


What I owe you

by Querulousgawks



Category: Veronica Mars (Movie 2014), Veronica Mars (TV), Veronica Mars - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Friendship, Shared History, references to canonical rape
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-08
Updated: 2014-07-08
Packaged: 2018-02-07 23:12:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 661
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1917621
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Querulousgawks/pseuds/Querulousgawks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Missing scene from A Trip to the Dentist, from Veronica's POV. Veronica and Weevil talk favors after he gives her a ride home from the Echolls' house.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What I owe you

"You ok?"

She grabs the helmet, climbs on in a silence she plans to hold for days, maybe years, but once they are moving the anonymity and motion of the dark pull words out of her and she finds herself whispering to the night air. Not the wry distant narrative that plays in her head, the story she tells herself to get through the day, but the truth. All the truths: _I get nauseous whenever I smell limes_ , and _now I'll never stop looking for wires_ , and _he drugged the first boy I ever kissed and that boy raped me_. The hardest one: _sorry is almost enough, when he says it_. And the most shameful, since Weevil is here, but unhearing, an empty confessional: _They all loved her first and I want to believe that she loved me best_.

The bike's noise rumbles down at a stop light and he turns his head, curious, to ask, "You saying your hail marys, back there?"

"Talking to Lilly", she says, which is half-true like always. "Which way do you think I should look?"  His chuckle blends into the engine roar as they accelerate.

Weevil walks her to the door and the gesture is comforting, if ridiculous. You'd think they'd both be through with chivalry, considering the sins of the available aristocrats. _Don't think about it_ , she reminds herself, and hands back the helmet with a flourish that's only a little shaky. If she thanks him again, he might say, _anytime_ , or, _just this once_. It's a tossup: she knows him but she can't predict him. He is still a suspect. 

He came when she needed him.

"Do me a favor?" She tilts her head to make him laugh, soften him up for what she's going to say. It works, he is smiling as he tilts back, says: "Maybe."

She looks down at the helmet, tosses a mental coin, and rushes it out: "Promise me you'll leave? Neptune. Just once, for a while, to see what else there is. Before you make a life here."

"Yeah, I'll just call my travel agent." The grin is gone and he leans into her, snapping words in her face. "That's something you can ask me? I already have a life here. The only life I'm getting. I think I'm out of favors, V."

She wasn't doing any more crying tonight. But it was just a passing thought; he didn't have to be such an asshole about it. "Bottom to every well, I guess."  
  
He turns away, swinging his arms to pop one fist against an open palm. It's not a relaxed, or relaxing, gesture. Veronica wonders if he would have followed Lilly out of here, if she'd let him. If she'd lived.

The silence stretches and she's startled when he speaks: "I'll trade you."

"What?"

"Say you'll do it too. Walk away from those rich boys, someday. From all of us, if you have to. Do it right."

She laughs, relieved. "It's not much of a deal, Weevil. I've been wanting out for years."

"Wanting's different than a promise, V."

They don't shake on it -one of them would have to reach out first - but just before he turns away she nods, once, and he nods back.

Then their lives explode again, Aaron and Felix and Beaver and Thumper, bridges and alliances, justice and injustice, and she doesn't think of that night until she brings down the Castle and finds her father among the collaterally damaged. _Wanting's not a promise._ She walks away.

And then she comes back. He's still there when she ducks out of the stairwell, soaked and vengeful, eyeing the wreckage of the reunion. "How about that Jade, huh?" she offers. Weevil gives her the new grin, the one that splits his face like he never wore a mask.

"She's Canadian," he says, too casually. As if he hasn’t been saving it up, the chance to give her this: "I met her in Montreal."


End file.
